Last week, Neil brought us the latest iteration of the Manning Index, showing which quarterbacks have overachieved in the playoffs relative to expectation (based off of the Vegas line). I’m going to do the same today for coaches. A couple of introductory notes:

Neil described the exact methodology in his quarterbacks post, so I won’t waste time repeating it. However, I wanted to look at coaches over an even longer period, and 1950 sounded like a good cut-off.1 Since we don’t have point-spread data for games from 1950 to 19772, I simply used the projected point spread based on the differential between each team’s SRS ratings and by awarding the home team three points. So for pre-1977 games, coaches are credited with wins over expectation based on the SRS, and for post-1977, for wins over expectation based on the Vegas line. Here are the results.

Joe Gibbs had two bad playoff games. While Washington may have been only a two-point favorite against the Raiders in Super Bowl XVII, the Redskins were the defending Super Bowl champions and just set the record for the points scored in the regular season. They were embarrassed 38-9. In their next playoff game eleven months later, Washington lost as nine-point home favorites to the Bears. In Gibbs’ 22 other playoff games, Washington went 17-5, with all five losses coming in road games where the Redskins were at least 3.5-point underdogs (and in four of them, the Redskins were getting at least a touchdown).

John Harbaugh is mostly here thanks to this great postseason run, as winning in Denver and in New England was worth 1.45 wins. If the Ravens beat the 49ers, he’ll jump into the third slot on the list.

Obviously all of Vince Lombardi’s games came before 1977, so I used the SRS for most of those lines. In 10 playoff games, he was a favorite 8 times. The two exceptions came in 1966 at Dallas (+0.2) and 1967 at home against a Rams team (+1.2). In six of his playoff wins, the SRS (or, for the two Super Bowls, the Vegas line) put the Packers as at least 9-point favorites. Lombardi’s teams were too good to give him that much credit for exceeding expectations, although a seventh-place finish isn’t too shabby.

Bill Parcells with the Giants: +2.9. With the Patriots: +0.1. With the Jets: 0 (two playoff games, won as a 9-point favorite, lost as a 9-point underdog). With the Cowboys: -0.9. Obligatory Tony Romoreference.

I can’t add anything to the Bill Belichick discussion that would differ from what Neil wrote about Tom Brady, so I’ll just note that with the Browns, Belichick won as a 3-point favorite against New England and lost as a 3.5-point underdog against Pittsburgh.

Paul Brown is an interesting case. The NFL does not officially recognize Cleveland’s records from their time in the AAFC, when Brown led them to five playoff victories and four championships (although the Pro Football Hall of Fame does). That caveat aside, Brown fares pretty poorly here. In the NFL, his playoff record was 4-8, and half of those wins came in 1950, the Browns first year in the NFL. Even ignoring his time in Cincinnati (0-3), he went 1-4 in games with a three-point spread and also lost to a far inferior Lions team 17-16 in the 1953 title game. Cleveland started that season 11-0, lost a meaningless final game, and then lost in Detroit. The 1951 Browns were just as good, but also allowed a fourth-quarter comeback to lose the title to the Rams. And despite being better than Detroit again in 1957, Cleveland was throttled 59-14. On the plus side, Cleveland did exact some revenge against Detroit in the middle, winning 56-10 in the 1954 title game.

Some final thoughts.

Doug came up with this idea six years ago, when he called it the Dungy Index (itself a revival of an earlier post). 4 As a reminder of the environment we were in at that time, consider Doug’s closing thoughts:

In the span of five weeks last year, Bill Cowher turned from A Coach Who Can’t Win The Big One to unquestionably one of the best coaches of his generation. I don’t have inside knowledge, but I can only assume that happened because he radically changed everything about the way he coached. I mean, what else could possibly explain how a Coach Who Can’t Win The Big One could win the big one?

As of right now, it appears that Tony Dungy might have completely and totally changed his coaching style and philosophy too, but we can’t be sure about that until next Sunday.

Spoiler: Dungy won on Sunday, and now he’s no longer a choker, either.

One final note. Please keep in mind that this measures a coach’s (team’s) postseason performance relative to his (team’s) postseason expectations. Knowing that Marty Schottenheimer scores poorly here does not tell us whether he deserves blame for underachieving in the postseason or credit for overachieving during the regular season. I also note that while I find this concept interesting, I make no claim that it holds any predictive value (to the extent such a concept makes sense when talking about retired coaches).

Note that coaches, like Paul Brown, who coached before 1950 are included, but their pre-1950 stats are not. [↩]

One other piece of fine print: for the Super Bowls, I used the actual Vegas lines, since those are readily available. [↩]

Some have understandably called this the Nate Kaeding game, since he missed a 40-yard field goal in overtime that would have won the game. I won’t do that for two reasons. One, the Chargers ran LaDainian Tomlinson three times for no gain once they got to the 22, a move that was unnecessarily conservative. But more importantly, the game never should have gone to overtime. Trailing 17-10 with 24 seconds left, San Diego had 4th and goal from the Jets two-yard line. Well, Drew Brees’ pass for Antonio Gates was incomplete, but the drive was kept alive by a roughing the passer penalty on Eric Barton. The call was correct, but it was a gift for the Chargers just to get to overtime. [↩]

Then I came up with my first Schottenheimer Index six years ago, although with a crude formula that does not hold up well on repeat reading (at least, in my opinion). [↩]

I assume there’s more to this index than the Manning one? To which there’s nothing, so I guess it’s not a high standard. But I can’t think of alternative ways to measure coaching, as opposed to the plenty of other ways to measure quarterbacking.

Shattenjager

I always refer to making over-conservative coaching moves as “Schottenheimering.” (e.g., “John Fox Schottenheimered the end of both halves of the Broncos-Ravens game.”) His actions in footnote three are a good example of why, even though, thanks to Jason Lisk, that particular maneuver will always be associated with Gary Kubiak for me.

Danish

I need help with the caption. Pilot light?

Chase Stuart

If you watch NFL Films/NFL Network enough, there are some good Marty soundclips. One of them is him (talking to the Browns, IIRC) with everyone in a huddle before a playoff game and him saying “If this doesn’t light your fire, men, then the pilot light’s out.”

Danish

God I miss Marty.

Independent George

The really painful Marty clip was from a practice before the Marlon McCree game, when he tells his DBs to just fall down if they make the game-clinching interception.

His conservative playcalling rightly deserves criticism, but he was also significantly less lucky than the average coach.

Richie

The really painful Marty clip was from a practice before the Marlon McCree game, when he tells his DBs to just fall down if they make the game-clinching interception.

I hadn’t heard that story. This is just more evidence that Marty is a terrible coach who chokes in the playoffs.

Tim

Marlon McCree wasn’t even the worst offender that game. Drayton Florence headbutted an opponent after the Chargers stopped Brady on 3rd down. This was after the play was over! Automatic first down and Brady and Co. go and drive for a score when they would have probably punted on 4th. In a game that close, you can’t just give Brady extra chances like that.

Jeff Fisher comes out better than I would have expected, which I guess means the success of 1999 basically balances out the failures that came later.

Chase Stuart

He was +1.4 in ’99, -1.3 the rest of his career, although all of that came in the two Ravens losses (2000, 2008). Those were the only two times in the playoffs he lost as a favorite. OTOH, he was only 2-4 as an underdog.

Wonderinmg how Don Shula and Tom Landry come out given their frequent trips to the playoffs and numerous games.

Richie

Click “Index” to get the bottom of the list.

And speaking of Shula, I think maybe all indices are not created equal. Shula is tied with Jack Pardee, Marvin Lewis and George Allen at 128 with a -1.8 index. Shula was expected to win 20.8 playoff games, but actually won 19. Lewis was expected to win 1.8 but won zero.

After 36 playoff games, Shula got to within 1.8 of his expected wins. That doesn’t exactly strike me as being one of the “worst” playoff coaches.

Richie

Dang it. That last sentence sounded snotty. Not what I intended.

Chase Stuart

You are grandfathered in to the ‘can’t sound snotty’ group, Richie.

Agree that a Exp Wins/Gs played column would add something to the table.

Chase Stuart

In addition to the sorting feature, there is a search box. I always wonder how many people use that. I hope most, but I dunno.